Czech mission in the Antarctic does valuable research

Last Saturday, Czech scientists from a number of institutions set out on their latest research trip to the Czech base in the Antarctic- located on James Ross Island. At the base, which was established in 2006, Czech biologists, climate experts and geologists engage in valuable on-site research. Zdeněk Venera is the director of the Czech Geological Survey in Prague, who was a member of the 2008 and 2009 Antarctic research team, talks about his time in the Antarctic and the logistics of getting there.

Zdeněk Venera

“The voyage to the Antarctic is a big adventure and it usually takes a long time. First, you have to travel by a commercial flight to South America, to Argentina and Chile, and from Argentina, we continue with the aircraft Hercules, which flies from the military airbase Rio Gallegos across the Drake Passage to the Argentinean base Marambio. The flight takes about four hours, but waiting for the flight can take a very long time, because the flight can only take place under perfect weather conditions, no wind, no precipitation, because the landing strip consists of just leveled mud, and it has to be frozen for any plane to be able to land there. Sometimes, you might have to wait a week or ten days for these conditions. And then from the Marambaio station, we continue by helicopter and they bring us to the Czech Johann Gregor Mendel Base, which is located on James Ross Island.”

Do you have to bring equipment with you as well?

“We have to bring all the field equipment, and also we need to bring the entire food supply for two months, we have to carry all of that with us.”

For those who don’t know a lot about science, what were some of the most interesting findings from the last two missions, which you were involved in?

“The most interesting and attractive findings are really the fossils. Our colleague Radek Vodrážka managed to find a fossilized fungus of the spongae kind in the Antarctic, which is really unique and has never been described before. Also very interesting are measurements of the current glacier movements, and tracking the glacial retreat, which can be observed on James Ross island and is our contribution to the knowledge of the current climate change. It is necessary to relate the changes in the current climate to changes that have occurred in the past and through the study of glacial deposits we can provide this link between the current and the past change in the climate.”